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Title: Dickens: A Biography by Fred Kaplan ISBN: 0-8018-6018-0 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Well-written, well-researched, scholarly work
Comment: The key word is "scholarly." If you want the run-of-the-mill pulp bio, you won't find it here. What you will find is a treasure of information on Dickens and his life. I have read every major biography of Dickens, and Kaplan's work is by far the best. I don't know how others could call it "boring," for I couldn't put it down. If you need your biographies "punched up," perhaps you should try Ackroyd's bio, which is more colorful but also more rambling. This is solid work, from a solid researcher.
Rating: 2
Summary: worse then boring
Comment: two stars due to the tons of information, but way too much that is strangely disconnected from Dickens' vibrant writing and his nearly frantic appreciation of life. Reading this (many passages you have to skip through they are so deadly), it's as though Kaplan waded through all of Dickens' writings even though not one of the novels struck a chord and really got to him. And there's that deadly present tense, i.e. Dickens goes here instead of went, writes to Forster instead of wrote; only makes it all more artificial, distant, bloodless, boring.
Rating: 2
Summary: Too many details, not enough emotion!
Comment: This book seems to have been written by a business man and not a man of literature. I felt as though I were reading Charles Dicken's family budget diary rather than a life-history. This biography is lengthy with details that are indescribably boring. I found myself longing for more of the emotional aspects of this marvelous man's life. Kaplan writes in a dry, uninspiring style. I had 'great expectations' for this book but found those expectations dashed to pieces on the rock of boredom.
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Title: Dickens : Public Life & Private Passions by Peter Ackroyd ISBN: 1592580025 Publisher: Hylas Publishing Pub. Date: 14 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens by Paul Schlicke ISBN: 019866253X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Charles Dickens: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives Series) by Jane Smiley ISBN: 0670030775 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 09 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Charles Dickens, His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson ISBN: 067021227X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: November, 1977 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Walt Whitman : A Life by Justin Kaplan ISBN: 0060535113 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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